"Can we really trust this guy?"
"He just feels suspicious."
"Between the way he looks and how conveniently he appeared, he really doesn't seem like a good person."
As March 7th spoke, she glanced back at Lygus, who was quietly waiting for the three of them to finish their discussion.
"Let's think about this."
Stelle began counting off their previous journeys.
"On Belobog, the first person we met was Sampo, who may or may not have been guiding us around the entire time."
"On the Xianzhou Luofu, we practically landed right next to Phantylia, an Emanator of Destruction pretending to be Tingyun."
"And on Penacony, if we don't count Acheron appearing in my dream, the first person we actually met was Misha."
"The former was an Emanator of Nihility, while the latter turned out to be Mikhail, the Watchmaker."
"So now we've landed here and immediately met this guy."
"If you tell me he isn't hiding some huge secret, I'm not buying it."
After Stelle listed the first people they had encountered during their previous adventures, the other two fell into thought.
Their wariness toward the Intellitron calling himself Lygus immediately increased.
"Everything he's told us so far has been presented entirely from his own perspective."
Dan Heng analyzed the situation calmly.
"So we can't trust all of it."
"But some of what he said must be true."
"If everything were fabricated from nothing, the story would be far too easy to disprove."
"The part about this world facing an apocalyptic crisis is almost certainly true."
"As for the cycles, we'll need to verify that ourselves."
"I already tried contacting the Express."
"Communications are completely unavailable."
"None of our devices can establish a connection, including the high-end IPC communicator I purchased specifically to deal with different kinds of signal interference."
That particular device was a limited-release product from the Interastral Peace Corporation.
Its technology had been developed from a patent belonging to a member of the Genius Society.
Even so, it could not detect a single usable signal.
"Lygus also said that almost all the surviving inhabitants now live in a place called Okhema, the City of Dawn."
Dan Heng continued.
"So regardless of everything else, we need to go there and gather information."
"Even if that city has secretly fallen entirely under his control, and even if every piece of information circulating there is something he deliberately allowed to spread, we still have to investigate it."
After Dan Heng finished analyzing the situation and stated their immediate objective, March 7th and Stelle scratched their heads.
Then they spoke at exactly the same time.
"So basically, we just go to this place called Okhema, right?"
"...Yes."
Dan Heng looked slightly helpless.
The three returned to Lygus and asked him to lead them toward Okhema.
Meanwhile, within Okhema, the City of Dawn...
"Aglaea, how much longer are we supposed to tolerate those disgusting parasites?"
"All they ever do is argue with us and obstruct the Flame-Chase Journey."
"Wouldn't it be easier to simply kill every last one of those useless bastards?"
The speaker was the king of Castrum Kremnos.
The Undying Mydeimos.
Though those familiar with him simply called him Mydei.
"And after everyone in the Senate is dead, who exactly do you expect to handle every major and minor matter in Okhema?"
Phainon spoke with a helpless expression.
"What happens to the confusion and conflict caused by suddenly transferring all those responsibilities?"
"Mydei, ever since Caesar died, Okhema has had no monarch."
"For generations, this city has been governed through the Senate and the aristocratic system that developed around it."
"If we eliminate every member of the Senate, there genuinely won't be anyone capable of taking over the city's administration in the short term."
"Even something as seemingly simple as distributing supplies could cause the entire city to collapse if it isn't handled immediately."
Phainon, Mydei's friend and a native of Aedes Elysiae, understood why Aglaea had never simply eliminated the Senate.
"The nobles capable of managing those responsibilities either died to the Black Tide or already joined the Senate."
"Even if a handful of capable people remain outside it, how could so few people possibly administer a city with more than a million residents?"
"Damn it!"
Mydei spat out a curse from Castrum Kremnos and stepped aside, no longer arguing.
Aglaea, whose sightless eyes had long since lost their former brilliance, finally spoke.
"I know the current situation no longer allows us to tolerate further delays."
"The Black Tide will reach Castrum Kremnos before long."
"Even though Nikador divided himself and transformed into an undying existence, he won't be able to hold it back forever."
"We must recover the Coreflame of Strife before the Black Tide reaches the city."
Then Aglaea asked,
"How is the Savior?"
Hyacine, serving as the physician, looked somewhat helpless.
"He's still unconscious."
"After all, he held back the Black Tide for ten full days and nights."
"If Professor Anaxa hadn't gained Cerces's recognition at the critical moment, obtained the Coreflame, and become a demigod, the Savior might not even have made it back alive."
Phainon looked equally worried.
Before attending the meeting, he had visited his friend and found him still unconscious.
"It seems the Savior won't be able to participate in the operation to retrieve the Coreflame of Strife."
So what exactly was the supposedly gravely injured and unconscious Savior doing right now?
Caelus was lying comfortably in a hot spring with a towel wrapped around his waist.
Beside him rested a beautiful young woman, wearing nothing but a bath towel as she leaned against him.
From the skin visible above the water, it was obvious that the Savior did not have a single injury on his body.
His complexion was perfectly healthy.
If anything, he looked extremely comfortable.
"Partner, which cycle is this?"
"33,550,336."
Caelus calmly stated a number so enormous that merely hearing it was difficult to comprehend.
Especially when each cycle lasted roughly a thousand years.
Even using exactly one thousand years per cycle, that amounted to:
33,550,336,000 years.
More than thirty-three and a half billion years.
Even the Milky Way itself had a lifespan measured in only tens of billions of years.
A span of over thirty-three billion years had already become so vast that ordinary people could hardly attach any real meaning to it.
And Caelus had used that immense amount of time to repeatedly record Amphoreus's thousand years of history.
Again and again.
Refining it.
Accumulating it.
Deepening it.
The records had now reached an almost unimaginable degree of completeness.
Only this final cycle remained.
Once it was completed, Amphoreus, the Eternal Land, would finally welcome a genuine future.
A brand-new dawn.
And throughout those thirty-three billion years, Caelus had naturally done far more than simply record the world.
After such an immense accumulation of time, even within this false digital reality, he had reached the Sixth Tier.
Yes.
Originally, Caelus had intended to reach the Sixth Tier only after Cyrene became complete within Amphoreus.
But after accumulating power and understanding across such an absurd span of time, he had simply advanced to the Sixth Tier on his own.
If Amphoreus had not been a simulated world, then after more than thirty billion years of accumulation, he might already have reached the Seventh Tier.
That realization naturally led Caelus to wonder about something.
Why didn't other Systems simply bring their Hosts into universes where immortality was easy to obtain and the flow of time was extremely fast?
Then they could just stay there for tens or hundreds of billions of years.
If everyone chose an immortality-focused build, wouldn't graduation practically be guaranteed?
After all, from a System's perspective, time itself hardly mattered.
The System immediately answered.
["How many intelligent beings do you think could withstand more than thirty billion years of erosion to their minds and personalities?"]
["Only existences that have reached the Sixth Tier can normally withstand endless time without having their sense of self completely erased."]
["You're an exception!"]
["Your personality was born from Nihility, and later you comprehended the principle of Equilibrium."]
["As long as Nihility exists, you exist."]
["With that kind of self-sustaining foundation, even when you were only at the Fifth Tier, the passage of time was already incapable of erasing you."]
["Put any normal intelligent life-form into an endless cycle like this and time would have crushed them long ago."]
["They would eventually choose the same solution Khaslana once did."]
["Kill the current self, pass everything on to the next version, and continue the mission by repeatedly burning through one self after another."]
(To be continued.)
◇◇◇
◇ One bonus chapter will be released for every 200 Power Stones.
◇ You can read the ahead chapter on Pat if you're interested: p-atreon.c-om/Blownleaves (Just remove the hyphen to access normally.)